Sincerely Yours
by TheNewIdea
Summary: Hunter Glass is a lonely South African eight year old boy with a birthmark that covers half his face, strange and questionable parents, and no friends. Brian is an aging cynic who has cut himself almost entirely from his past and all human contact. Together they will form an unlikely friendship and along the way answer questions about life, love and happiness. Experimental piece.


Based on _Mary and Max _(2009) starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette. The characters used from the Family Guy canon have been altered slightly to suit the needs of the story, and as a result are not faithful to the canon. But that is rather obvious.

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Hunter Glass had eyes the size of button pins. On his right check was a red, dirt stained birthmark that covered less than half his face. He was eight years old. His favorite shirt, the one he always wore, was a red and white striped polo, with this he wore brown shorts and frayed and falling apart sneakers. Hunter lived in Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa.

Like normal eight year old boys Hunter dreamed of being something that he was not- an astronaut, a writer, a politician. But unlike normal eight year olds Hunter had no friends to speak of, his only company being his pet cat Frank, who had no right ear, and the small figurines on his shelf from his favorite TV show, the Rats, a show about rats who lived in the sewers making crazy inventions to steal food from humans, often with hilarious results. They weren't real toys, for Hunter had made them out of things he found, pieces of copper were used for the tails, used toilet paper tubes for the bodies and cotton balls for the ears and fur. For the eyes he used bits of paper or, when lacking paper, simply cut holes in the Styrofoam ball that made up the head. These figurines, seven total, sat on an old wooden shelf above Hunter's bed.

Hunter did not have friends for many reasons, most of them, if they didn't have to do with his birthmark, had to do with his parents. His father, Mr. James Glass, was fittingly a glassmaker. At least that's what he called it. In reality, Mr. Glass was a simple button pusher, the only thing he was required to do on a daily basis was push a red button that made the machine work. On average he pushed that button three hundred times a day for little to no pay. It was thankless work, and as a result, the Glass family lived on the outskirts of the city in a small and demeaning house in what was once a flourishing suburb.

Hunter wasn't sure what to make of his father, for he had weird and obsessive hobbies, always changing and never conventional. The latest endeavor was fire swallowing, last year it had been swords. Every day, when Hunter came home from school, he would find his dad standing out in the backyard practicing his routine as if for a show, that he never gave, participated in, or went to.

Mrs. Glass, whose name was Elaine, was more trouble than she was probably worth. Elaine also had a hobby, but unlike her husband, hers was more…devious. She liked to borrow things for long periods of time, in other words she was a thief. But "borrowing" sounded better that "stealing" because it was easier to explain, and technically speaking, not against the law, unlike stealing, was definitely was. Elaine also had a bit of a drinking problem, her favorite drink was red Chardonnay. She said it was a special drink for adults who needed concentration to borrow things for long periods of time. Elaine was a very interesting, and strange woman.

Meanwhile in New York there lived a dog, his name was Brian. He was also eight years old, but time moved differently for him, and so converting to human years, he was 61. A Labrador retriever, Brian lived in an apartment building. At the moment he was sitting on a dusty couch in front two TVs, a smaller one, which had picture but no sound, and a larger one, which had sound but no picture. In his hands, for he considered them hands even though anatomically they were considered paws, was a Diet Coke. He didn't normally drink Diet Coke, but today was Wednesday, his weekly eat and drink whatever you want and don't give a shit about what other people think of you day. He too was watching the Rats.

Brian watched the Rats for two reasons, they lived in a society in which order and prosperity existed and it was simple and easy to understand.

Brian did not like complicated things or difficult situations. In fact, he didn't like them so much that he resolved, for the rest of his life, to have as little human interaction as possible. The way Brian saw things, it was people and not humanity itself that made life difficult and unnecessarily stressful, and so he cut them out altogether.

His psychiatrist, Harold Werner, disagreed completely. He argued that people were what made the world interesting. He had said that a life lived alone is no life at all. Perhaps at another point in time Brian might have believed him, but now, sitting in his low-level apartment on a dusty old couch, he did not.

Brian never got mail, paper or electronic, or many visitors. The only person he made an effort to see besides his psychiatrist, was his neighbor, Mrs. Doris Valentine, an elderly widow who is, in every sense of the word-blind, despite her claims that she is only half blind and only in one eye. Brian did not believe her like he did not believe his psychiatrist. The only reason he saw Doris at all was because she would have kept coming over anyway just to see if he was alright, something that Brian thought was sweet and unnecessary at the same time.

Most days Brian sat at home and did what he always did when he was incredibly bored, he stared out his window and tried not to think about how old he was. He hated the fact that time moved differently for him than it did for everyone else. It felt as if the world was moving slower than he was that he was progressing at such a fast rate that he would ultimately reach a point of higher thinking and leave his body. This thought terrified him, so much did it terrify him that he did nothing about it and continued his existence as it was.

He sat and sat and did nothing but think, and as he thought he thought about why he was even in New York to begin with. That he was here, in a lonely, dark and damp apartment, and that his family, what was once his entire world, was somewhere else. Every time he tried to make contact with them he either chickened out or got their voicemail. Brian would not leave any messages on the machine, for if he did then it would be cluttered with nothing but his voice, something that he didn't want to do or else risk an already horrible reputation getting worse. He didn't even so much as breathe after the tone, lest they find that creepier or perhaps more desperate than talking.

Brian continued to sit and continued to think and as the late night hours turned into early morning he looked lazily around the small living room and noticed that his parrot, Feathers, had shit on the floor. It took Brian a moment or two to process why there was bird poop on the floor at all, for normally there was newspaper to take care of the problem. Five minutes passed before Brian realized that he hadn't put any newspaper down.

Back in Johannesburg Hunter was busy waiting with his mother at the post office. As he waited he began to count everything that was blue. There were his blue shoes; two stacks of blue packages, ready to be delivered; the employees who wore blue shirts; and finally a phone book of New York City for the current year.

Hunter wondered if things were different in America. If people pushed buttons in factories making glass, if cats had both ears and if they heard of the Rats TV show. Hunter wondered many things and as he wondered he had an idea. He decided he would write one of them and ask them his questions. Picking up the phone book, Hunter opened it, the book automatically going to the letter D. Scrolling down the list, his eyes closed, to keep it a mystery and to make it fun, Hunter waited ten seconds before stopping, his finger landing on the name Dog B., at Apartment 101, 2874 Lexington Avenue.

At that moment, Elaine had just finished borrowing some envelopes and post it stamps. Just as she was about to walk out the door undetected, one of the envelope boxes fell out of her dress and onto the floor causing security to investigate. Running towards the door, Elaine grabbed Hunter on the way out, forcing him to make a split second decision and tear the address from the New York phone book.

Twenty minutes later Hunter was back in his bedroom starting at his homemade Rat figurines when he began to write.

_Dear Mr. B Dog,_

_My name is Hunter Glass. I am eight years old and live in Johannesburg. Have you ever been to Johannesburg?_

_I don't have many friends, I try, but I just can't seem to get people to like me. Maybe I'm defective. Anyway, I was hoping you could answer some questions for me, I have so many I don't even know where to start._

_Do people in America push buttons on machines to make glass? My dad does that. He can make a thousand pieces of glass a day. He doesn't get paid much, but it sounds really cool._

_Do cats have both ears in America? My cat Frank doesn't, he was born without his right ear, but I don't think he minds, for he likes to focus on one thing at time. Usually that one thing is me. _

_Have you ever heard of a TV show called the Rats? It's really big in here in South Africa._

_Do you know where God comes from? Dad says that God comes from the clouds and that he lives in a big castle surrounded by servants. Mom didn't answer, I don't think she believes. I'm not really sure who to believe._

_Please consider being my friend_

_Sincerely yours,_

_Hunter Peter Glass._

_PS- I am sending you a drawing of me, I don't do eyes very good but I do pretty good hair. I am also sending you a bar of chocolate, which was supposed to be for my lunch tomorrow._

_PSS- What kind of a surname is Dog?_

His letter finished, Hunter put the letter in the envelope, a stamp on the envelope and with all the confidence in the world, put it in the mailbox. All that was left to do was wait.

Because we live in the modern day, the 21st century, and not in the 1960's the mail service traveled almost with ungodly speed, to the Big Apple, reaching its destination exactly four days and seven hours later. During that time Hunter had watched the Rats, found and adopted a meerkat, named it George, and continued waiting for a response. But all of that is not important. What is important is that the letter reached Brian's mailbox and exactly 10:55 pm the following Monday, the day of his weekly Humans Are Good meeting at the local park.

Walking in to his apartment building Brian absentmindedly checked his mail. He didn't expect anything to be there, for nothing ever was. When he saw the letter and the small package that came with it, Brian raised his ears suspiciously, giving both items a curtesy sniff before taking them up the five flights of stairs to his room. He didn't smell anything remarkable, for his nose wasn't as good as it used to be, the chocolate going almost unnoticed. If he smelled it at all, he thought it a figment of his imagination.

"_That's strange"_ Brian thought to himself, _"I never get mail."_

Brian looked at the address just as he was to open his door. To say that he was in complete disbelief or astonishment was an overstatement. He knew exactly what it was before he even opened the letter, for the crude handwriting on the front of the envelope gave it away. Brian couldn't help but laugh to himself and as he opened the door to continue his dreary and bland existence Brian threw both the letter and the box on the small table in the corner of the room and thought nothing of it.

Turning on both of his TVs Brian began another ritual. Pulling out a lottery ticket from somewhere else, Brian watched the screen for his numbers- 7, 8, 11, 13, 9, and 4. He had chosen the same six numbers for the lottery for the past five years and each time they came up worthless. That night, the winning numbers were 6, 9, 10, 12, 5, and 3.

As the night dragged on Brian still found himself awake, unable to go to bed for fear of dying in his sleep. It was then that he remembered the letter. Walking over to the table and grabbing the letter opener that was conveniently on it, opened the letter and began reading.

He read it five times.

Brian wasn't sure if he should be insulted by the letter or go into shock out getting mail for the first time since he had lived there. He cut straight down the middle and went with both. Brian screamed, threw random things across the room for no particular reason and masturbated for three hours before finally going completely insane and taking a couch cushion and throwing it out the window only for it to land on the homeless man with no teeth that begged on the sidewalk in front of the building.

For three days Brian pondered and pondered, curiosity and suspicion constantly battling in his head on whether or not to give a response.

"What do you think?" Brian said turning to Feathers, who only squawked in acknowledgement, for he wasn't very good at mimicry.

"My point exactly" Brian returned talking to himself and interpreting Feathers' response to suit his own thoughts, like humans do with almost all domesticated animals, "I should just drop the whole thing."

Feathers squawked again and flapped his wings together as if in disagreement. Brian, who understood the bird's facial expressions, could see discontent and annoyance in his eyes, a suggestion that the proposed idea was neither right nor very good as far as ideas went.

"Alright fine" Brian exclaimed, "I'll think of something."

Deciding to be fair to Hunter, Brian decided to reply using a typewriter. Pulling the heavy, barely used antique from his father's mother's brother that he never managed to meet, Brian sat in front of the window in the living room in the most comfortable chair he could find on a crudely made table and began to type his response.

_Dear Hunter Peter Glass,_

_Thank you for your letter and the chocolate, which unfortunately for health reasons I was unable to eat. _

_My name is Brian. I am, in your terms, 61. I live alone with my pet parrot, Feathers, in a small low income apartment in Long Island. As for my surname, it is unfortunately, rather complicated as well as literal, for I am a dog, specifically, a Labrador retriever._

_I have never met anyone from South Africa before, so I have to ask- What is your opinion on Nelson Mandela? You do not have to answer._

_I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability._

_As far as I know in America people do push buttons to make glass, although I have yet to see it myself I am sure that there is a factory somewhere that does it, probably in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, for they seem to be the most likely candidates._

_Unfortunately, cats do have both ears in America, but that is only because we dogs haven't figured out a way to rip them off without getting our noses scratched. When the day comes that we figure out the best method, I can assure there will be more one eared cats in the world, maybe then Frank won't be as lonely as he probably feels sometimes._

_You watch the Rats too? That's good to hear, my favorite is Moose for he is always getting into things that he shouldn't. _

_I feel it only fair that I should tell you a little bit about myself._

_I have had many jobs during the course of my life. The first one I can remember was as a ticket taker at a circus, I was paid almost entirely in peanuts. It was thankless work, but I did get to see the show for the amazing low cost of one bag of peanuts, which most of the time, was my dinner._

_For a time, between the years of 1995 and 1997 I was head editor of Harrisburg Inquirer in Virginia, it was there that I got a passion for writing. By the time I left Harrisburg in the spring of '98 I had lost all creditability, my name had been ruined thanks to a sandal. I won't go into great detail but let's just say I lost a lot of things that year._

_After that I was a brief resident of Rhode Island, in which I was a police officer, a factory worker and a brewery employee. I still managed to write on the side, even wrote a book once, but it didn't get anywhere and my reputation sank further than it ever had._

_I'm sorry if this is long winded, for you are only eight and probably don't read things as long as this, but in case you made it this far, I thank you. _

_I think I can leave you with that._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Brian S. Dog_

_PS- The "S" stands for Sullivan, which again for complicated reasons I have been required to take._

_PSS- Please send more chocolate, as Feathers seems to like it and it calms him down. Also, please find enclosed a picture of me as well as the last copy of my book, which you are not in any way obligated to read. If you do not like it, burn it._

Brian stopped writing and ripped the response from the typewriter. Walking to the living room, Brian returned with an empty box and the last copy of Faster than the Speed of Love, which he then signed and placed both it, and the letter inside. After writing the appropriate address on the box, Brian made the long walk down stairs to the outside world and the mailbox on the corner, passing the beggar with no teeth as if he didn't even exist.

Feathers meanwhile, sat on the windowsill and watched as Brian did his first form of communication with another human being in a long while. The parrot said and did nothing as Brian opened and closed the mailbox, the passage safely waiting to be delivered, only watched and waited wondering what it was that Brian was going to do with this potential opportunity. He hoped that he would take it.


End file.
